And We Ache
by sofia-carby
Summary: Tony/Ziva. Angsty. Tony is hurting after Jenny's death. He blames himself. He blames Ziva. She might be the only who who can take it all away. However, the time is running out. For both of them. Full summary inside.
1. i

_**Tony/Ziva**, also known as fluttering in and under ribs inducing lovebirds. Rated T for safety. Set after season 5. Not a one-shot. Tony is beating himself up over both Kate's and Jenny's deaths. Ghosts from his past are haunting him, snatching life out from under and over him. He blames himself and he blames Ziva. She might be the only one who can turn his life back the way it used to be . But time is running out; for both of them. You are wonderlovely in every way possible if you review and I want to improve so please comment. It is different but I am different and that difference often turns into weird letters and words and sentences. Please forgive. Oh and enjoy and don't beat me up for writing about bruised inside-and-outside Tony. He is still wonderful, I swear._

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Fall came late that year. It came on day when the sky was mourning the sun, letting wander lusting ocean soak the city with its chlorine breath and trees with their soon-to-be-dead leaves. He woke that morning, with ache in and all over his skull and a burning sensation in the back of his throat. It felt as if someone had twisted his gut inside out. Not that it mattered. His gut never spoke, whispered or uttered anything useful anyway.

His eyelashes were matted and glued together, forcing him not to watch the wreckage that sometimes (and lately all the time) was shown in his mirror. As he feet touched the floor he realized how cold it was. Damn. He must've left the front door open. Again. Or forgot to pay the heating bill. Again. The air was as stale as his own vodka-dripping breath. But he liked it. He liked the realness of it all. Bird flesh on his limbs and aching in the roof of his mouth. It whispered sweetly to him that all this was reality, these blessed moments in not remembering, not fogged up mind and veins filled with spirit(s). It always came crashing down on him though. Reality, that is. When he passed the beer bottles with their slit throats and saw the wine stain on the couch. Redder than spilled blood, sipping out in every corners, marking its territory. That shattering moment in the morning was always when he remembered. Jenny's death. How he had caused it. And before her; Kate's death. He could have and should have prevented both of their murders. He hadn't. He hadn't because he was a coward on spider legs, sneaking past death's sticky grip and leaving others – people he cared about – to be the ones who were clawed and caught and swallowed whole. Again and again. He was a coward. He snorted once before acid burned his tongue and he threw up, all over the couch, blending guilt with evidence of failure.

He could barely see the outside. He opened his jaw wide and let his breath scrape the windowpane. The window fogged up more, making invisible letters visible and see-through. He remembered this. He'd written it sometime last night (or was it the night before?). It was absolute nonsense and all he could remember was having his head high in bits and pieces of drunken clouds. Coffee clearly wasn't going to do it this morning. And he had to go to work. First day back after a three-month leave. His therapist had told him to take some time off. Get out of the city. Get some air. And oh how he'd glued that pebble-toothed smile on like he always did in situations like these. Said "Oh yeah. Good idea." The same way he always said "On it boss." When he'd come home that night he'd for the first time since college gotten completely smashed and woken up in a bush somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He vaguely remembered falling, falling tripping believing he could fly into an old pool and breathing the dead leaves in water whirlpools beneath his feet and breathing the chlorine. He'd had bruised knuckles and face and inside. Well, at least he had gotten out of the city.

He was nervous now. He had kept this façade nice and strong for years months days now. It had cracked too much, though. Like and old statue, he'd fallen apart piece by piece, the artist who made him long gone. The artist. Yeah right.

He was nervous to meet Gibbs. McGee. Abby. Ducky. Even Palmer. But most of all he was nervous to meet Ziva. She had been right there, when Jenny died. Stood next to each other in that soul-filled room, watching naked empty bodies of enemies and a friend. They had drunk in the dark together. He didn't like the way she always stared right through him – spider-web ribs and all that red and sticky inside – like she could touch and make wonderful of every single emotion that had ever passed through his nerves and heart. She didn't understand, though. She couldn't possibly imagine. This was her fault, too. He got angry now. The same way he had felt throughout the whole, tripping dust-hot summer. Every-color-hot rage and a stabbing sensation from somewhere inside. Anger took away the ache in his head, a bit. He liked that. It was Ziva's fault, too. She didn't have the right to look through him. Like she knew him. Knew his past and knew who he really was. Oh the cliché of it all made him laugh until the fakeness almost turned reality inside out.

In the elevator, he has the feeling that he is on his toes, feet, feet slipping and he is falling, crashing down in moody ocean waves, salty promises about fornever drowning him. That's how it feels. Not like he's going up. His lungs are almost exploding and his knee is already scraping rock bottom as the doors smoothly glide open.

As he works his way to his old desk, there's an almost snow-still silence. His fingertips are buzzing like colorful insects and he sees brown and golden and gasp gasp. She turns around at that exact moment, neck bird-like, her lips apart like that, puffy bottom lip dropped and fluorescents all sparkly white-brown in her eyes. He hates her. He hates the way she gets up, the way she flings her skinny arms with lack of downy softness around his bowstring-tense neck. He hates the way her all-own scents bore into his pores and mind.

As she draws back she is breathless, trying to steal air from his crammed oxygen space. Her smile is there, dimpling her cheeks and eyes.

"Hello, Tony." Her voice. Goddamn her voice. Going all around him, trying to pull words out from beneath his throat. Her want and need is too big for him. So he grins with his mouth but falter with his still-saltwater-stinging eyes.

"I see McGeek hasn't taken away your love for me." And her key bones soften and unlocks and she is giggling, crystal clear and painful all the same.

Oh, how normal it all is now.

He hates her. For her normality, for the way she isn't guilt-ridden by his ghosts.

When she slips her hand around his wrist her touch burns more and in other buzzing places than vodka in a dried-out stomach does.

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_Thank you ever so much for reading this little piece of not-really literature. There will be more, enough to make you overfed with depressed Tony if this chapter didn't already do the trick. Please review, my darlings._


	2. ii

_I am aware of the short chapters. That's no good, is it? However, I'd rather get blooded tooth (that's a Swedish saying for getting a taste of something) than to get blooded teeth. Please review, darlings. Still keep in mind that it's a bit weird … but again, that's just me and my tragic mind. Tony's still perfectly normal. _

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Tony stared at the computer screen. Tiny letters swirling about, melting together in long strings of blackness on a sugary white background. He couldn't focus. He was so tired his bones ached and his muscles were as soft as his belly, turning inside out and per usual causing crashing waves of nausea. Outside his head was all quiet and wonderfulness but inside was very, very, screamingly loud. Sunlight from the large window to his left stung his eyes and made him cringe away from it, taking breaths deep down in the pit of his stomach. Daytime wasn't his time of day. He lived (if that's what he did, he didn't really know) during night, when the edges were wonderlovely blurred and everything wasn't so achingly clear.

McGee sat to his right (how could something be right when everything seemed wrong? It was fascinating) as he had always done, fingers easily tapping the keyboard, breeding numbers and breathing logic. Logic. Tony didn't believe in logic anymore.

Ziva weren't behind her desk and his heavy-lidded drowsy eyes filled with sleep-want swept over her workspace. Sharp-edged paperwork; neatly put together in alphabetical order. Her little notepad was lying gaping to the world like a newborn, covered in graphite stains. He had a sudden urge and need to read whatever her delicate fingers had copied from her mind and scribbled down. He got up from his desk and immediately the world started dancing around him, pouring colors over his tightly glued together eyes.

'You alright, Tony?'

McGee's voice was tentative, carefully making his way past the clogged-up void of last summer. He had used that tone ever so often, lately. Tony could hear McGee get up, could hear the soft sound of his footsteps and forced himself to open his eyes. He drew a smile on his face as his knuckles tightened on the back of his chair, causing white bones shining through veins and muscles and skin, leaving a flushed, red aftertaste covering his hands.

'Oh, I'm fine. Just a little tired. Rough night,_ if _you know what I mean.'

He felt proud of the easy drawl of his voice, stretching out the square syllables, making them soft as feathers and just as normal as they used to be. It worked, too. McGee smiled back, relief flooding his eyes and facial features. Tony, as he used to be, was back.

'Rough night huh? What's her name?'

'Mary,' Tony answered, his lying tongue scrubbing off the bloody before the Mary. 'But forget it, Probie, she's way out of your league.'

McGee just rolled his eyes skyways and shook his head. Tony could tell he was pleased though, it shone through his skin. McGee was happy that things were going back to the way things used to be. Tony was just happy to get one weight off his crooked back, snap one of the strings that were tied to his stretched out ankles.

As McGee turned back to his numbers, Tony went over to Ziva's desk. A plant stood there, swaying lightly from the swirling air, making his eyes water and his nose felt as if it was soaking in acidic bubbles of oxygen. Go figure. He was allergic. Leave it to Ziva to get an uglier than life plant with poisonous foam around its green mouth to guard her desk. It didn't stop him, though. For some reason, he very badly wanted to read that notepad, snooping around her desk just like back in the old days gave him a feeling of bitter nostalgia, as sweet as sugar. As butterflies were attacking the inside of his ribs, he fed his curiosity with the words she had written. Nothing of importance, though, and a sour feather of disappointment lightly grazed his gut. He put the notepad back on its steely surface, feeling McGee's sighing gaze tugging on the collar on back of his neck. Tony grinned and turned around, giving McGee a thumbs-up. McGee only raised his eyebrows and pointed at a distant spot somewhere behind Tony's aching head.

She stood there, hand resting on the soft curve of her hip, eyebrows lost in the bird's nest that was her hair. The red, puffy lips she wore made an 'o' and various other soft letters. Words were somewhat glued shut on his tongue so he smiled out loud.

'You were snooping around my desk?'

Her voice was smooth against his, a hushed kind of loud, with its usual hint of exotic accent that always made him think of warm countries far away. He also caught hold of the amused tone.

'Yes. Sorry.'

She laughed then. Put down her bag next to her chair, handing him one of the paper cups filled to the shivering edge with fogged up, bitter coffee. She cocked her head to the side, warm curls spilling over. He observed this and realized his awkward footing. He tried to straighten his back.

'Okay, then. Guess I'm not really used to lock everything in my drawers before I leave.'

I took the cup and oh, sweet, sweet caffeine shot out in his dried-out veins.

'I know how to pick a lock, Ziva, believe me.'

He didn't know why he was keeping this up. The baring of teeth, the light, wispy tone with teasing words softly falling into her open, greedy palms. He was still angry. She on the other hand, seemed everything but. She just bit her pillowy lips with her front, bunny-esque teeth, and sipped her coffee, drawing long gulps of energy. He wondered if it burned her throat as much as it burned his.

'Well, I should get back to work.'

His tone was abrupt. Cold, even. He was afraid if he stood there any longer, his mask would crack and he would say something horribly awful. Even though he hated her for what she'd done, he didn't want for things to get twisted and turned again.

He made his way back to his desk as she nodded softly with the smile un-curling the corners of her lips. He sat still for a few moments, resting his forehead that felt like it was on fire against the now-black computer screen. He was half feeling the air beat down upon his face.

'We've got a dead marine. Grab your gear.'

The sound of Gibbs's sharp voice cut his ears into bits and pieces. He sighed and sipped his coffee, just drawing in air through his lips for a moment before getting up, following Ziva and McGee to the elevator. McGee took the stairs though, and Tony wondered silently what else he'd missed after his summer spent in the drowsy embrace of the bottle. In the elevator he and Ziva were a hands breadth apart and he tried to twist away from the salty breath-smell of her. He couldn't put a finger on what it was. Maybe, just maybe, it was the taste of knowing you're not forgiven.

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_Please review. More tragic but still lovely angst to come. _


	3. iii

_Thank you all for your wonderfully sweet comments. Every little consonant cluster from you means extremely much. I am cloud high pleased that you enjoy the weirdness of the story. Please review. _

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It was November in every corner now. Cold was seeping in under tightly wrapped scarves and thick skin and morning settled over the earth like a foggy blanket of light. The team was out somewhere, drowning in puddles of mud, tragedy and after-summer life, only rain witnessing them. The naked trees with their sprawling, skinny fingers gave no cover for the two dead lovers they found, embracing and folding into each other like old, forgotten lawn chairs with red paint peeling off. All over the place there were shattered limbs bending wrong and - ah - right ways. It looked as if they had been making love until Death brutally spilled his soft breath all over them, twisting their bodies different ways but with the same destination. There were fallen, paper-wrinkled leaves stuck to their dirt-snow colored skin, wet with their lover's pleasure-sweat, melting in each other in more ways than one.

Tony was in charge of taking photos and with each flash he captured that moment of beauty blending with destruction. He photographed their entwined fingers; tightly holding onto each other, as if they were afraid one would grow wings and take flight without the other. The male lover's face was turned towards the girl and his chest was sunken as if he had given his last breath to his lover as a gift. He was only wearing a pair of bloody tennis shoes over limp, curled toes that turned counterclockwise. Between two of his jutting ribs was a hole as big as Tony's left thumb, vomiting blood all over the man's pouting belly. The female lover only wore colorless, stiff lips and a hole in the side of her skull. The other side was not pretty, for either of them.

'Think it's suicide?'

Ziva had snuck up behind Tony, as usual covering grounds fast and easy, the quietness too loud, making his ears itch. She stared in somewhat fiery wonder at the two dead lovers; her fingertips lightly resting on her jawbone and her lips filled with ice-splinters from the cold that grazed the earth. She was sucking on the sticky ends of her rain-matted hair, a bad habit he had begun noticing lately in the corners of his eyes and mind.

McGee came up to them. He took photos, too, but the flash froze in the ice smoke and his fingers resembled red, dried-up grapes with the cold licking the skin raw.

'I don't think so. It looks like they were tortured before they were shot.'

Ziva nodded and turned to Tony.

'Maybe they wanted to feel pain before they took their lives.'

His words clung tightly to the before-winter air, a non-refundable sentence captured in a sharp puff of carbon dioxide. Tony could feel McGee and Ziva exchanging gazes under questioning brows. They had started doing that a lot, lately.

'Funny, Tony. I think you have watched one too many horror movies.'

McGee was laughing then, soft and bubbly. He snapped a picture of the red spider web on the man's blue-white chest. His nipples were like cold, deserted islands parting the Red Sea.

Ziva was still staring, though. Tony turned to her, his eyebrows in the skies and his words in fighting position.

She turned her gaze to the couple again, her forehead working in wondering folds.

'Think they committed suicide?'

'I already told you what I think' he snapped, accidentally taking a picture of nothing at all, really. The flash blinded him for a halting second.

Gibbs and Ducky came up to them then to work on the dead lovers and Tony and Ziva turned around and walked back to the car, dead dirtwater spilling all over their shoes. It started to rain. It was filtered through the bare treetops and came down lightly, speckling his hard, irritated shoulders and landing in dew droplets in Ziva's hair. Air struggled to hold him upright and thunder and anger numbed his ears.

Back in the office he left muddy prints after him. He made the right phone calls to the right people, exchanged easy-forgotten words with McGee, said 'Yes, boss', acted like all was well and went down to Abby's. She had been acting so normal since he came back and it almost hurt in all the right places. The black strokes on her lips, the mountain-high shoes, the buttery voice, her excitement and caffeine flowing through her blood stream; giving birth to words all tangled up in each other's syllables. Her green eyes were like sea grass, soft and kind and going all around him. She dimpled and placed the bows of her fingernails on his forearm, pressing normality in and under his skin.

'Gibbs sent me down here to see if you'd found out anything.'

'Oh yeah. Check this out; I found only his fingerprints on the gun. Which basically means he shot her and then shot himself.'

'They committed suicide.'

'Yeah. Like a suicide pact. Pretty freaky, huh?'

He didn't answer.

'Also, apparently she was dying.'

'Dying?'

'Yeah, she had lung cancer.'

He thought about the cigarettes they found in the brown, dead grass next to the all the same dead couple and imagined the girl trapping her lover with smoke rings.

'What about his broken toes and her arm?'

'I think he tripped on the way, carrying her from their car. She was too weak to walk herself. It was pretty slippery out, right?'

Yes, yes it was.

'I think they wanted to die together, Tony.'

He thought it was stupid.

They uploaded Tony's photos of the moments he'd sealed. They were taken from all kind of frozen-stiff angles but it was the last one that captured both of their attention. It was the picture of Tony. The frame carried all of his gray face and the flash exposed his red-rimmed eyes. He looked horrible.

Abby traced the air around the contours of his frozen, emotionless face on the screen for a second before turning to him and all wide-eyed and warm-bodied she hugged him. It just made him feel worse.

When he was back behind his desk he got his eyes glued on his watch. He observed the arms twisting about each other, the minutes overlapping the hours, the seconds dislocating sluggishly. He massaged his temples, pressing thumbs hard into the soft, fragile bone, hoping to dig out the stress that had gnawed itself somewhere inside his mind. He just wanted to go home and forget everything about lovers dying for each other.

Ziva came up then. She was wearing different clothes than she had out in the love/death field. He silently wondered why he noticed that.

'Hey.'

He almost laughed, then. Cotton-edged memories with a sweet, salty sweet aftertaste of their relationship four months ago was making his head spin around his heart. All was easy then. He did not turn in circles that made him feel so, so sick that he pressed his palms and claws into his belly, trying to tear that sickness out. He wished they could retrace their paw prints in the rocky mud-road. He caught himself wondering if perhaps maybe possibly they would've grown closer if he hadn't taken the very wrong turn and falling face-(and fate)first into the sticky gutter. He shrugged that off, though. The ice window that had frozen between the two was hard to melt through.

'Hi.'

'So it was suicide?'

'Yeah.'

She smiled lopsided then, the happy lines around her left eye flashing.

'You were right. Here I almost thought you'd lost your touch after your forever-lasting vacation.'

Happy lines turned to deep curves of semi-teasing and her teeth bared in laughter. He knew she wanted him to give her soft words back, answer with a typical Tony-comment so the shivering chessboard would come to a standstill. He could tell she wanted to quit playing whatever game he was playing because he was moving his players all around, color black always replacing color white. She didn't recognize the colors. She didn't recognize him.

Suddenly he felt powerful. The butterflies of nervousness and uneasiness he always felt when she was in his breathing space suddenly stopped mating deep down in his stomach. So he sneered.

'Whatever, Ziva. It's not like it was very hard to figure it out. Any idiot could've done it.'

He laughed curtly before pulling the cord, knocking her out of his way, ambushing her king.

'Even you.'

_Shāh Māt._

Her smile cracked the wrong way then, falling away in chewed-off bits. She turned away from him, far-off gaze pasted on a spot reflecting in the window he failed to see.

'Oh.'

Her voice was as thin as wood smoke and just as hard to capture between his cold palms.

'Good night, then. Tony.'

When she walked to the elevator she looked like a bird with broken wings being dragged in the dirt. He didn't like that. He didn't like the tiny shard of guilt that she placed in his insides.

_It was her fault, too. _

_It was. It was her fault, too._

_She deserves this because Jenny died on her watch, too._

He didn't notice how hard he was biting down on his lip until he tasted blood swirling with saliva and the hurt she left behind.

We he came home he blew wine bubbles. He sat on his balcony, feet pointing up towards the sky filled with flakes and pieces of blurred stars. He drowned in pulsing alcohol in hopes of removing whatever feeling Ziva had left under his ribs. He closed his eyes and felt his pulse running marathons through the nooks and crannies of his body.

_Damn it all._

Under him, traffic was going a millions miles per lifetime, street lamps gracing his skin with a sickening glow. It all went too much fast but still nowhere near fast enough. He imagined falling down there, landing on soft asphalt among a sea of colors, blinking lights and heated metal.

_Damn it all._

It stayed captured in is imagination like fireflies in a glass jar, trying to break the glass. He wasn't ready to fly just yet. He stumbled from the balcony through his darkening apartment, the moon spilling milk-light all over the floor, over all the movies he used to watch, drowning his old, rust-covered life.

_Damn it all._

Later, he fell in the curve of his mattress and into broken sleep. He dreamt about carrying heavy weights on his broken shoulders and slipping in droplets of dew.

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_Thank you all for reading. I might be repeating tongue twisting words again and again until you sigh heavily; but please review my strange little piece of drawn-out sentences. Gibbs will breathe a part of these sentences soon, too. I miss his non-words, don't you? Even if things are dark, stars are still in Tony's sky, see? He will get better._


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